(Source: mtv.com)

(www.NellyHQ.com)

MTV: You're on a mission to put St. Louis on the map, as far as music is concerned.

Nelly: That is a mission in itself. Just bringing St. Louis to the [forefront], 'cause there's a lot of people who don't even know where St. Louis is. I'm looking on [the MTV studio] wall now, and I'm seeing a lot of [license] plates, but I don't see any Missouri plates, so it's all gravy. I'm hoping we can get the notoriety for now, but St. Louis is our foundation. No matter what we do right now, we always can fall back on the Lou', 'cause they've been loving us. They've been holding us up for so long. Any time we go down, they can give us that boost to come back up, and I think everybody needs that. Lock down home first, 'cause that's very important, we think.

Nelly: It's like we're crying out for our time to shine right now. We've been doing it for a while. It ain't that, "Well, they finally got something hot." It's always been hot acts in St. Louis. It's just that people [are] going down there, taking the time to recognize and take a look and see what's really going on. We've just been building up and building up to this point to where now we're screaming with our heads cut off. We're really feeling ourselves down there in St. Louis, and I ain't talking about me. I'm talking about the whole St. Lou' right now. It's all love down there. It's "Country Grammar"-ed out down there, and I love 'em, man. I love 'em. For sure.